


six feet over ground

by beanpod



Series: bingo fills 2020 [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chuck Hansen Lives, Kissing, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, POV Chuck Hansen, Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25837339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanpod/pseuds/beanpod
Summary: Funny how all his classes at the Academy had been about how to fight till the end of the world, but none had covered what to do after. So now Chuck flounders, because of course he does, and doesn’t quite know what to do with the rest of the life he was sure he wouldn’t get, and his feelings about it.
Relationships: Raleigh Becket & Chuck Hansen, Raleigh Becket/Chuck Hansen
Series: bingo fills 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874800
Comments: 2
Kudos: 71
Collections: Pacific Rim Bingo 2020





	six feet over ground

**Author's Note:**

> for the 'angst' square at the pacific rim bingo 2020
> 
> title after aquilo's song, which i listened to on repeat all of today to get in the mood because i haven't written angst in months.

His last night at the big ol’ Shatterdome’s a bit weird, Chuck thinks. He’s all packed and ready, walls bared off his shitty posters and useless crap, closet empty and clothes packed neatly into a duffel bag.

Chopper’s picking him up tomorrow at oh-six-hundred, destination Anywhere-but-here. Max’s staying with Herc, at least until Chuck can settle…somewhere. Everything’s signed, ready to go.

Raleigh’s at the door of Chuck’s room, leaning on the frame with his arms crossed over his chest, all nonchalance. Chuck, though, he knows what this is all about, knows how hard Raleigh is trying not to say anything, how hard he’s trying not to say the one thing Chuck has been aching to say.

Weird, he thinks, because before he’d died-but-not-really, their relationship hadn’t been like this: awkward silence and longing stares directed at each other when the other one isn’t looking. And that’s the thing, he supposes, because even before Pitfall, Chuck’s been _looking_.

It’s not fair, Chuck thinks. Fuck Raleigh and the way his eyes get even bluer when he’s packing himself up to say something that’s been in his mind for _days_. It’s absurdly _stupid_ how easy he is to read now.

And then Raleigh says, “It’s not fair,” and Chuck smiles from his desk chair, fingers tapping on the desk, a swift touch to the surface.

“Hardly anything is,” Chuck nods, feeling like they’ve had this conversation before, but it can’t be, no, because Raleigh here has been on a sulk for _fifteen hours_ and this is the first time since then he’s reached out for Chuck.

Listen, Chuck didn’t almost-die for this. His last thought before Stacker had said _No you don’t, kid_ and shoved him head-first into a pod had been _There’s no fucking up now_.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the first thing because he’d been knocked out and after that he’d been for-reals dead for sixty seven seconds, apparently, while they’d tried to remove him from the pod, and after that he’d been in a coma for ten days, but the sentiment stands. He knows what kind of person he was—god, even looking back on it, admitting it, it sits heavy on his gut.

And it’s not like he forgets, oh no, because how can he, when everyone looks at him with a mix of pity and reluctant respect? There’s no escaping the remains of what you once were, there isn’t.

So, he tries. He tries to be better and work harder (as much as he can, anyway, because now that the breach’s closed so are his office hours, so to speak) and not let it get to him anymore.

Raleigh’s making a tea-kettle kind of noise where he stands, barely holding onto himself. Fuck, Chuck wonders if there’ll be any punching today and whether he’s ready for that because the last of his stitches _just_ came off and he really doesn’t wanna be back in the med bay.

“You didn’t even consider—you didn’t even listen, did you?” Raleigh looks flushed, angry, exasperated. It’s a regular look on him whenever they talk, lately, and it does more than break Chuck’s carefully put façade.

Because how many times does a guy have to say _I am done with this—all of this_ for him to be taken seriously. Chuck’s tired. All that cocky pride stayed buried under the remains of Striker. The anger, the sorrow, the grief, all of it. And this—everything around him, god, _everyone_ around him reminds him of it.

So it’s not fucking _fair_ , Chuck thinks desperately, that he wants out and they won’t let him.

 _They_ not including Herc, though. Herc’s been… He looks at Chuck with a different glint in his eye now. Chuck recognizes pride now, along with fond exasperation. It’s a good change for everyone involved. Everyone else _but Raleigh_ , are uncharacteristically neutral about it. They want him to do press tours, hold babies, something or the other, stuff Chuck would’ve honestly jumped at first chance he got before.

That sucks too. _Before_. He has one of those now. _Before I died-but-not-really_. God, his life is a cliché now.

 _You still got one, though_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Stacker whispers at the back of his mind.

Fuck it.

It’s been three months. Three months of this— _this_ weird thing between them where silence isn’t silent but talking’s not an option because neither knows exactly what to say. Funny how all his classes at the Academy had been about how to fight till the end of the world, but none had covered what to do after. So now Chuck flounders, because of course he does, and doesn’t quite know what to do with the rest of the life he was sure he wouldn’t get, and his feelings about it.

Chuck looks at Raleigh and wills him to understand, telepathically, what he can’t put into words. That’s another one that stings, though, because he’s seen the way he and Mako barely share a glance between each other before their fucking drift compatibility becomes apparent. It stings because Chuck’s not sure he’s ever gonna have that. With anyone. Not necessarily Raleigh.

 _Fine_ , that one stings, too.

“There was nothing to consider, Rals,” he says, looking away. He’s a coward, he knows. All of this would be much easier if Chuck could be just as honest with Raleigh as he’s learning to be with himself.

But here they both stand.

“Fine, then,” Raleigh says, pushing off the door and stalking away, not looking back, boots loud on the ground, thump thump thump thump.

Weird how it matches Chuck’s heart.

-

Chuck’s bunk bed only has one blanket tonight. He’s shoved his regular bed set (it being army issued sheets that are still holding together through the grace of the divine) his duffel. Getting up and getting it out sounds like far too much work.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

Across the hall, through all the old, creaky metal of the ‘dome, someone’s humming a random song. Chuck wants to go in there and ask them please, for the love of everything holy, to turn keep it down because it’s both making Chuck queasy and keeping him awake when all he wants is to pass out peacefully one last time in a bed that smells too much like home but has never felt like it.

And because there’s nothing much he can think of at this time of night, he thinks of Raleigh. Thinks of what Raleigh had asked without asking.

Chuck remembers, or thinks he remembers, really, Raleigh sitting by his side back when he’d been still in medical and pumped on so many drugs, he could barely be awake for a full five minutes. He thinks he remembers Raleigh reading to him. It’s weird as hell, because the last person to ever read to him was his mom, back when things were easier, and Chuck’s not really ready to have those two images together and side by side in his head.

He remembers, though, Raleigh, and Mako, too. Both of them sitting quietly by the end of his bed like two goddamn guardian angels. Raleigh had been there when he’d been signed off by one of the docs. He’d patted Chuck’s elbow awkwardly, that kicked-puppy smile of his that had made Chuck stumble a little. He’d been man enough to admit it wasn’t the medication.

Fuck Raleigh for being so sternly _good_. Fuck Raleigh for having crept through the still healing cracks in Chuck’s chest and making room for himself there like a goddamn freeloader.

-

Nightmares are a thing, too, because why the fuck not.

Chuck’s eyes blink open somewhere around three am. He stares up at the ceiling, blanket pulled all the way up his chin, and wonders why he feels so cold, so numb, while still warm inside the cocoon of blanket, singular, he’s burrito’d himself in.

He sits up slowly and looks around and—and doesn’t recognize his old room. Bare walls, clean spaces where there used to be none of. It reminds him of the room he’d been in the medical bay. Awful, blank and cold.

He puts on his boots. He needs air. Needs—

Raleigh’s door, a few doors down his own, is firmly closed, no sound inside the room. Chuck moves slowly towards the mess hall, wrapping arms around himself to keep his bare arms warm because it’s colder here than it was in his room and it’d be real funny, wouldn’t it, if pneumonia is the thing that takes him out.

Oh, it’d be _hilarious_.

Raleigh’s sitting at one of the empty tables, elbow on the surface and chin on his palm, a glass of milk in front of him, an open book on his other hand.

He looks up when Chuck comes in and then goes back to staring at his book and its contempt, unfazed. Chuck takes him in slowly: rumpled shirt, messy hair, bags under his eyes. He wants to reach out and touch, wants to maybe wrap his arms around Raleigh and take him to his room and wrap his still-warm blanket around him, keep him warm and—

Chuck tries really hard to stop that train of thought.

Raleigh looks up at the same time Chuck entertains the idea of leaving and going back to his room. He feels suspended in time and space, for as long as it takes Raleigh to get up and come over to stand in front of Chuck.

Chuck’s about to come up with a half-assed attempt at avoiding conversation when Raleigh says, “Can we talk for a moment?”

It’s the way he asks, Chuck tells himself. So earnestly. Like he cares, like he _actually_ wants to talk _to_ Chuck, and not _at_ him. Chuck licks his lips, nods wordlessly, and follows when Raleigh nods back to the table he’d been occupying before. He glances back to make sure Chuck’s following, and Chuck doesn’t take offense.

They sit in silence for a while. The glass of milk stands between them and even from where he sits the smell of it makes Chuck queasy. He was never much a fan of it.

“I understand,” Raleigh says at last, and holding Chuck’s gaze, adds, “why you wanna leave. I get it.”

“Do you, now,” Chuck says, crossing his arms over the table.

“Yeah,” Raleigh nods. “I think… I think it was the same for me, back then. After Yancy.”

Chuck licks his lips and looks away. “It’s not same, mate. I didn’t lose a brother, now, did I, Rals.”

“No, guess you didn’t.” Raleigh’s mouth twists wryly. “I lost myself, Chuck. S’what I’m trying to say. And it’s…” He sighs. Shrugs again. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be lost. I get that.”

Chuck wants to maybe yell at him _You don’t get shit_ , but maybe Raleigh does get it. Chuck takes a deep breath, and only slightly winces when his dog-tags swing under his shirt.

“You should come with me,” Chuck says at last, in a single breath, “you should come with me and leave this shithole behind for good.”

Never let it be said Chuck didn’t at least try.

Raleigh huffs a tired laugh, sags a little on his seat. “It’s not that easy.”

“Right,” Chuck agrees with a grin that is anything but. “Still gotta do your victory tour, huh.”

“That’s not why I’m staying,” Raleigh says.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Rals,” Chuck throws back, and then, as an afterthought, “Or doesn’t help, considering.”

“I’m gonna miss you,” Raleigh says. His eyes are so fucking blue. Chuck hates him.

“Of course you are,” he says, standing up.

-

Chuck’s proud of a lot of things.

This? Not so much.

The thing is he hadn’t expected Raleigh to follow him. Stupid of him, really, because although Raleigh’s proved to be very unpredictable in the last—how long’ve they known each other? Six months?—few months, he’s remained to be one hundred percent stubborn.

So he follows Chuck and has this face about him like he’s about to punch him again, but then he’s grabbing Chuck’s elbow, fingers tight and not off to a good start, and stopping Chuck short.

And Chuck, because at this point has literally nothing left to lose, kisses him.

Not his proudest moment. Chuck’s expecting Raleigh to push him back. He’s expecting a fuck-ton of things that might have turned into a reality back when Chuck’d been younger and cockier and left loose in town.

But Raleigh, because he defies what’s expected of him as a hobby, kisses back. Enthusiastically, even.

It sucks because Chuck now knows what he tastes like. Now Chuck has touch memory of how soft Raleigh’s hair is, how warm the skin behind his ears is, the weight of his hands on Chuck’s back. What he smells like up close: generic detergent and spicy aftershave. God, how’s Chuck going to survive this, when he knows how well they fit from mouth to knees.

Death had sounded so much easier than this.

“I’m gonna miss you, Chuck,” Raleigh says again when they pull apart, again, like Chuck hadn’t heard him the first time, like he hadn’t felt this _weight_ at the bottom of his stomach.

Fuck this guy, honestly.

“Fuck you,” he says. Comes out like he’s been punched, and maybe he has. He pulls his hands back from Raleigh’s face. “You don’t get to do this— _this_.” Later, when Chuck’s gathered enough of his wits to convince himself this didn’t change anything, he’ll maybe think about how he was the one to _do this_ in the first place.

“Why not?” Raleigh asks. His fingers tighten just so. “Chuck—”

“Don’t,” Chuck warns, voice ragged, taking a step back, but Raleigh’s hand on his arms doesn’t let him get far enough. “Fucking don’t, Raleigh—”

“Okay,” Raleigh acquiesces. Easily. Too fucking easy. He drops his hand from Chuck’s body. “Alright, Chuck.”

Chuck blinks furiously, setting his jaw. Fuck this, he’s not gonna cry. Why would he. _Fuck_ this.

He nods, steps in the direction of his cold, empty room. “G’nite, Rals.”

Raleigh’s mouth quirks, but he doesn’t say anything in return.

-

Chuck doesn’t get back to sleep. His alarm comes and goes at five am and he gets through washing up and getting dressed on autopilot. He forgoes breakfast and heads straight for the helipad; he still has fifteen minutes to spare, but he can’t stand the sight of his empty room any longer.

Herc’s talking to some techs when Chuck gets there.

“Hey, old man,” he says, when Herc dismisses the people he’s been talking to and approaches him.

“You ready to go?” he asks.

Chuck nods, patting his duffel. “All set. Where’s Max?”

“With Mako. They’re probably on their way up.” Herc shrugs when Chuck raises an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that look, kid. S’not like she’ll steal him.”

Chuck nods, shoves his hands in his pockets. Out of the blue—because it’s too-goddamn-early o’clock and he hasn’t had enough sleep in god knows how long—he asks, “I’m doing the right thing, right?”

Herc spares him a long glance. His eyes are baggier than back when they had to fight kaijus, but somehow he looks… healthier. Better rested. Chuck’d been clear with him since the moment he’d been up and conscious enough to make his own decisions. He’d told the old man, _I’m going back home_ , which had not been exactly accurate because Chuck’s not sure he has a home out there (yet), but Herc had understood.

“I can’t answer that, son,” Herc tells him quietly. “I’m only glad you’ll have time to figure it out.”

Chuck nods. “Right.”

That’s when Mako arrives, Max in tow, panting and drooling all over himself. Chuck’s gonna miss his little spitball. He crouches down, lets Max slobber all over him one last time. “You be good while I’m gone,” Chuck tells him sternly, “don’t pee on grandpa’s boots anymore. Don’t chew on Mako’s stuff, she’s too nice to tell you off.”

“ _Grandpa_ ,” Herc huffs.

Chuck ignores him, kisses Max’s forehead. “I’ll see you soon, kiddo. I love you. Don’t forget me, I’m your favorite Hansen.” When he stands, Mako’s looking at him with a tiny smile. “Don’t spoil my pup, Mori. I expect daily updates on his wellbeing.”

“Of course,” Mako nods. “Let us know when you settle down, we’ll talk transpo.”

“Thanks,” Chuck tells her, and lets the hug happen before he can talk himself out of it. She’s tiny in his arms. But she’s seen her kick Raleigh’s ass on occasion, so he knows looks are way deceiving when it comes to her. She pats his back, kisses his cheek.

“Be safe,” she says, gently.

“Thank you, Mako. You, too. Keep everyone in line, huh?” When they pull apart, Herc’s looking away. Chuck clears his throat, clutches his duffel’s strap a little tighter. “Bring it in, then, old man. No need to be dramatic about this.”

Herc huffs a laugh but hugs Chuck tight enough to leave him winded. “Take care, son.” He pulls back and keeps Chuck at arm’s length. “Take care, alright?” He smiles at Chuck, a little wet, and then his eyes look over Chuck’s shoulder. His mouth quirks weirdly. “Let me give you a hand with your stuff,” he says as he takes Chuck’s bag, and then he’s off towards the chopper.

Chuck doesn’t have time to say ‘Thank you’ because there’s suddenly a Raleigh Becket in his periphery. His hair’s still a mess and Chuck hurts, somewhere in between his ribs.

“Came to say goodbye,” Raleigh says, like it needs pointing out.

Chuck nods, waves at Mako and Max, who’ve joined Herc near the helicopter and are now talking to the pilots. “There’s a club, apparently.”

Raleigh laughs. “Sure there is.” He glances at the chopper. “Already know where you’re headed?”

“Airport first,” Chuck says. “I’ll figure it out from there.”

“You’ll be alright,” Raleigh tells him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. It lingers and it makes Chuck clench his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. Lord knows if he reaches back now, _now_ of all times, he’ll never get on that helicopter.

“I will be,” he says, and nods.

He claps his dad on the back again, pats Mako’s shoulder, and gives Max one last scratch behind the ear. If he concentrates enough, he can still taste Raleigh on his tongue and feel the touch of him, all of it clear as day.

But things are what they are and Chuck swears it doesn’t sting when Raleigh’s not there anymore as he takes off.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://beanpodsoup.tumblr.com) if ya wanna hang :) also let me know if i forgot a tag or missed something


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